Snapshots of law, gender and sexuality news from the past couple of weeks.

Female-only Cambridge University college allows transgender students

Arizona Hart, University of Manchester

A female-only College at the University of Cambridge has changed its admission policy to allow applications from transgender students who identify as female. The change was made following a decision by the Council of Murray Edwards College, one of three female-only Colleges at the prestigious university.

Prior to the decision, the College only admitted students who were legally recognised as female. In the UK, a person’s legal gender may be proved by a Birth Certificate or by a ‘Gender Recognition Certificate,’ a legal document that was introduced in 2005 by the Gender Recognition Act.

Under the change, the College will now admit students who are not legally female, but who identify as female and have “taken steps to live in the female gender.” What exactly will be required to prove this is unclear. In effect, it means that transgender persons who identify as women but who have not legally changed their gender under the Gender Recognition Act – a process which is lengthy, complicated, and cannot begin until a person turns 18 – will be allowed to apply to the College for the first time. (more…)

Robyn Emerton is a PhD candidate at Keele University. She is researching legal and policy development relating to transgender prisoners in England and Wales and is a qualified solicitor. Mia Harris is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford and researches the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in prison.

This time last year, the cases of Tara Hudson, Vikki Thompson and Joanne Latham sparked public concern regarding the treatment of transgender prisoners. On Wednesday, 9 November 2016, the government published its revised policy, and its first official statistics, on transgender offenders. This welcome development was unfortunately eclipsed by media coverage of the US election results. Indeed, cynics might say that this was the government’s intention, given the sensationalist headlines that accompanied the announcement of the original policy five years ago. This is a shame, as there is much to be celebrated in its revised policy, as well as in the public’s increased understanding of the plight of transgender prisoners over the last year.

Over the last couple of years, I have written a series of articles addressing the issue of so-called ‘gender fraud,’ and opposing criminal prosecution on this basis. As recently as December of last year, I sought to take this prosecutorial practice to task in the context of the conviction of trans man, Kyran Lee, and before that Gayle Newland, whose eight year sentence shocked the nation.

I concluded the Kyran Lee piece with an ethical call, a plea for cisgender people to protest more vociferously regarding state intrusion into the lives of trans and gender queer people on the basis of a deception claim. I entertained the hope that the next witch hunt waiting to happen might be averted. Sadly, that hope has proved forlorn. Instead, it would seem that we are, much like Bill Murray, caught in a perpetual Groundhog Day – a cis and heteronormative ground zero. (more…)

Yesterday, the government’s Women and Equalities Commitee released its long-awaited report on transgender equality[1] The report is generally very positive in identifying a range of serious problems faced by transgender people and in making some important recommendations (especially in relation to healthcare provision, prison reform, depathologisation, and legal recognition of trans youth (16/17 year olds) and non-binary people). However, the committee side-stepped the important issue of prosecutions for ‘gender fraud,’ despite receiving written submissions on this subject. Accordingly, an important opportunity to address the travesty of such prosecutions has been missed.

Sweden has the highest rate of rape in Europe, but this is partly because the country records allegations in a different way to most countries, tracking each case of sexual violence separately. For example, if someone says they were raped every day by their partner for a week, officers will record seven potential crimes. In contrast, many other countries would simply label it as a single incident. This wide reaching tracking system has helped to uncover the hidden statistics of male rape. In 2014, some 370 cases of sexual assault on men or boys were reported across Sweden, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, although experts believe that the actual figure is much higher.

Snapshots of law, gender and sexuality news from the past couple of weeks

Uganda’s Anti-Gay Act Signed into Law

Jesse Bachir, Durham University

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed the now infamous anti-gay bill into law this week amidst great protest from human rights groups and western countries. Since then, many countries have announced reviews of their aid policies regarding Uganda. Notably, the Netherlands will stop sending $9.6 million in aid to assist with Uganda’s courts, while Norway and Denmark will be giving a combined $17 million to NGOs and human rights organizations operating in Uganda, rather than as aid directly to the country. The US has also announced that it will be reviewing its diplomatic relations with Uganda, including a review of its aid policies, which amount to $400 million per year.

The law criminalises gay sex and same-sex marriage and provides for life imprisonment for so-called ‘aggravated homosexuality’, which is defined as any sexual relations with someone of the same sex more than once, with a child, with a disabled person, or where one individual is HIV positive.

Until very recently, I used to think transgender people were an especially vulnerable group in our society. It certainly appeared so. Didn’t they experience far more violence, discrimination and general incivility than most of us? In fact, I’m sure I remember reading somewhere (somewhere credible in fact) that 42% of transgender people never come out at work for fear of losing their jobs. Well you can understand it really. Indeed, and sorry for being pedantic, but wasn’t it the case, despite an obvious clear and present danger, that law, and the criminal justice system more generally, failed miserably to protect transgender people’s bodily and sexual autonomy? In fact, I might be mistaken (though I think you’ll find I’m not), but wasn’t it the case that the very definition of rape excluded transgender women so that cisgender men could basically rape them with impunity (see, further, my article ‘The Failure to Degenderise the Law of Rape: The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act and the Transsexual Rape Victim’ (1995) The Criminal Lawyer, 7-8). Of course, some things have improved. But none of this really matters, because this version of recent history (while true) is no longer fashionable.